Alabama

Meet the SEC schedule guru fitting square pegs in round holes

Larry Templeton, pictured here as Mississippi State's AD at the College World Series, is now a consultant for the SEC. Templeton said TV wants better SEC football games earlier and later in the season. (The Associated Press)

HOOVER, Alabama -- Larry Templeton kicked up his feet inside a Regions Park suite this week. The SEC baseball tournament played out below him and his mind was racing while he analyzed the confusing bracket.

"I would love single elimination to promote baseball with all 14 teams here," said Templeton, a former Mississippi State AD. "The coaches will never go for it."

Templeton lives and breathes scheduling. He heads the SEC transition committee for Texas A&M and Missouri, meaning he's charged with fitting square pegs in round holes to schedule every sport.

Future football and men's basketball schedules will be set next week at the SEC spring meetings in Destin, Fla. Templeton feels fairly confident in saying this: There won't be nine SEC football games, and the next SEC men's basketball tournament will have two play-in games.

Jon Solomon is a columnist for The Birmingham News. Join him for live web chats on college sports on Wednesdays at 2 p.m.

OK, "play-in games" are my words, not Templeton's. Another duty of scheduling gurus is framing terms favorably to lessen the stigma of, well, play-in-games. "They will not be play-in games," Templeton said. "They will be seeded games."

Pending approval next week, Templeton said the tournament will open with two games on Wednesday night -- No. 12 vs. No. 13 seeds and No. 11 vs. No. 14. This is the same format the ACC recently adopted for its 14-team tournament once Pittsburgh and Syracuse arrive, leaving the top four teams with byes into the quarterfinals.

The big questions in football scheduling starting in 2013: Who matches up with whom as permanent partners, how will other cross-division teams be rotated, and how far out will the SEC make this schedule? Templeton said the format appears to be the 6-1-1 model, meaning a team plays six divisional games, one permanent cross-division opponent and one rotating cross-division team. That's what's being used in 2012.

Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia should be safe as rivals. Kentucky-Mississippi State, South Carolina-Arkansas and LSU-Florida are permanent games that could be switched.

Presidents at South Carolina and Texas A&M previously said their schools will become permanent partners. That could leave Arkansas and Missouri to play annually.

"I've been around this (SEC) group enough to know that when they get together for four days there's a lot of things that change from Tuesday to Friday," Templeton said, chuckling. "But I wouldn't look for a lot of change in the permanents if truly the 6-1-1 is what we end up with."

Templeton needs to know how many years he can schedule the next format. Anywhere from one to 13 years are on the table. Without that answer, the transition committee can't create schedules or specifically identify what games ESPN and CBS will have access to as they renegotiate rights fees.

CBS has balked at paying a significant increase, arguing that adding Missouri and Texas A&M doesn't change its deal, according to The SportsBusiness Journal. The more significant negotiation is with ESPN over an SEC channel, which The SportsBusiness Journal reported could launch as early as 2014.

"I think what TV is interested in is how many quality games we're going to have every Saturday," Templeton said. "They're more interested in what we're doing the second week of the season and what are we doing the week before Thanksgiving with everybody either on an open date or nonconference games before their archrival games."

CBS' broadcast on the next-to-last weekend in 2011, Arkansas-Mississippi State, drew its second-lowest SEC rating of the season. The only other choices that day weren't very appealing, either: Kentucky-Georgia, LSU-Ole Miss and Tennessee-Vanderbilt. The options on that day this season could be rough, too: Arkansas-Mississippi State, Ole Miss-LSU and Tennessee-Vanderbilt.

The SEC usually avoids many conference games during the first two weeks. Over the past five years, the SEC played an average of two league games annually in Week 2. This season, Georgia-South Carolina moves off Week 2, leaving Florida-Texas A&M, Georgia-Missouri and Auburn-Mississippi State as TV options.

"It's been challenging," Templeton said of football scheduling. "I'm one of those guys that's ready to go. We've lost, in my book, three weeks of schedule time by waiting until Destin. We'll catch up."